The Deceiver
by Autumne255
Summary: Jesse Turner is anything but normal. He's an angsty, hormonal teenager with somewhat lacking social skills and no popularity. Oh, he also has superpowers. This is his story. Slightly AU, set in 2014 not End!verse


**For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.**

**-**The Bible

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><p>Jesse Turner is not normal. Then again, who is? I'm not normal. My parents certainly aren't normal. I don't think I know any normal people at all. Nobody's normal, and anybody who tries to claim otherwise is insane, and even less normal than the rest of us. But Jesse, well, he's a whole different degree of abnormal, isn't he? He's probably as far from "normal" as it gets. The thing about Jesse is, and I feel awful saying this, everybody has always thought he was a freak. Not a single person knew just how right they were.<p>

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><p>"Um, uh...hi..."<p>

The golden-skinned girl whipped around, her bleached-blonde hair flying around her and hitting Jesse Turner full in the face. The sixteen year old boy blinked the sting of the razor-sharp strands out of his eyes. The girl's blue eyes found Jesse's face, and a look of disgust shadowed her face.

"Oh. You," she sneered, her beautiful features twisting into an unattractive scowl, "What do you want, freak?" Jesse coughed slightly, not exactly shocked, but shaken all the same. For five years, he had been called freak

"I...wanted to..." he inhaled deeply, his face flushing. He looked down at his hands, playing with his fingers, "...maybe, um...I mean...I was wondering if you wanted-"

"Spit it out, loser."

"Willyougotohomecomingwithme?" Jesse blurted, his face burning red hot.

The blonde girl's perfectly shaped eyebrow lifted, and her mouth flattened to a bemused line. She studied him carefully for a moment. Out of the blue, she started to laugh. Jesse's face fell, and his mouth opened slightly, ready to defend himself, but no sound came out. He seemed to have been rendered temporarily mute.

"Are you shitting me?" the girl asked when she'd finally stopped laughing. Her face was suddenly deadly serious. Jesse shook his head. _No_. The blonde rolled her eyes in annoyance, "Yeah, how abouts not. See, you're a loser, and I-"

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><p>Stop. That's a terrible place to start. Let's rewind, shall we? Go all the way to the beginning - five years into the past - to the day I met Jesse. It was Autumn, the year – 2009...<p>

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><p>The sun shone through the grey clouds blanketing the sky for a brief moment, before disappearing again behind the shadowy wall. An orange leaf, its surface cracked and wrinkled, broke from its branch and drifted to the ground. A pale eleven-year-old girl with dark red hair sat in her backyard, drawing on the pavement with coloured chalk. Surrounding her in all directions was a maze of shapes and patterns, flowers and faces and clouds carved in chalk dust, abstract forms and concrete objects. The girl was small and skinny, and her slim arms were covered in a rainbow of pastel chalk dust up to the elbows. She crouched on the cement, weight on her knees, and her shins flat against the cold pavement under her. She was absorbed in her work, hunched over with her nose inches away from her stony canvas, scratching away with the chalk. A strand of hair fell into her face, and she brushed it away, leaving a smear of pale purple chalk on her forehead.<p>

"That's really nice."

The voice broke through the little girl's silent concentration, and she jolted. Her stick of chalk clattered to the ground and broke in half, and her wide, shocked eyes found her addressor. Sitting mere feet from her, cross-legged on the grass, was a boy with dark hair and pale, blue-green eyes; eyes which were focused on the girl's artwork. She looked at him. He tore his intent gaze from the sidewalk and met her stare with his own. The two children looked at each other for an indefinite amount of time. A bird in a neighbor's yard added the finishing touches to its nest. A red squirrel darted through the grass several yards away from the boy and the girl.

"Who are you?" the girl asked - no, demanded - at long last. Her small features were stony and her pale blue stare bore down with sharp ferocity on the boy's face.

"I'm Jesse," he held out his hand, apparently oblivious to the cold judgment with which his peer contemplated him. The girl studied the hand as if it were a gun that might at any second go off, then, hesitantly, shook it with her small, pale, purple chalk-covered hand. The coloured dust came off her hand and stained Jesse's.

"I'm Africa-Rose," the girl said tentatively. Jesse seemed to contemplate this for a moment, his eyes focused on something behind Africa-Rose. She turned her head, trying to see what he was looking at, but saw nothing. When she looked back, Jesse's face had broken into a wide grin.

"I like it. Do you have a last name?"

"Do you?"

"Yes."

There was a brief silence, in which the two children stared at each other, and a dog in a nearby yard barked twice and then went back to digging in the flower bed. After a moment, Africa-Rose realized that Jesse was not going to tell her his last name

"Carpenter. My last name is Carpenter." Jesse's face broke into an even wider smile, and Africa smiled back at him. Jesse picked up the broken piece of chalk and handed it to Africa-Rose.

"Sorry."

"Why are you sorry?"

"I made you break your chalk." Africa-Rose laughed.

"It's okay, I have lots more," she looked at the two pieces of chalk, and an idea hit her.

"Hey," she said, holding out one half to Jesse, "You wanna draw?" Jesse looked at the chalk, his pale blue-green eyes lighting up.

"Yeah," he said, taking it, "Thanks...Africa-Rose."

"You're very welcome."

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><p>Hello. My name is Africa-Rose Theodora Carpenter (I told you my parents weren't normal), and this is the story of Me, the Anti-Christ, and a Hell of a lot of secrets.<p> 


End file.
